Cattle Truck Crash Prompts PETA Billboard

Todd PittengerSeptember 10, 2018

A recent cattle truck crash has prompted the most well-known animal rights group in the world to put up a billboard in Salina.

Back on August 7th a truck hauling cattle crashed in rural Saline County. A semi hauling 65 head of cattle crashed in a ditch southeast of Salina. As the driver reached for something a couple of wheels dropped off the road, the load shifted, and the truck and trailer rolled onto its side into a ditch.

A half-dozen head of cattle were killed in the crash. The driver was not hurt in the crash.

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organization, or PETA, have put up a billboard.

PETA says the billboard is in memory of the cows who died in the truck crash. The billboard shows a cow’s face next to the words “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.”

PETA notes the billboard, which us located at the corner of Crawford Street and Plaza Drive just east of Sunset Plaza, is less than half a mile from a McDonald’s restaurant.

PETA, whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”, says that before cows are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughterhouses, they’re often confined to cramped, filthy feedlots without protection from the elements or temperature extremes. Calves are torn away from their mothers within hours of birth and are castrated and branded without painkillers. At the slaughterhouse, workers shoot cows in the head with a captive-bolt gun, hang them up by one leg, and cut their throats-often while they’re still conscious and able to feel pain.